129

Address Delivered by the
Secretary of State at Washington, April 25, 1939

[Extract]

Nations have most frequently resorted to war
on the plea that it is the only method open to them for redressing wrongs or
the only means left to them of settling international differences. For neither

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of these purposes is war the best of the remedies available to man, or,
in fact, a remedy at all. There is no controversy, no difference that can arise
between nations, which could not be settled with far greater benefit to all
concerned by the peaceful processes of friendly adjustment than by resort to
armed force.

When a nation makes a deliberate resort to armed force, on any plea whatever, it
pursues in reality a wholly different objective; it uses war or threat of war
as an instrument of a policy of territorial expansion or domination of others.
Such nations are the authors of war, the awful cost of which is paid by their
own people and by the rest of mankind.

Whenever there are nations in the world which
adopt this type of policy, their intentions and actions inevitably set into
motion forces of resistance. Terrible as are the realities and consequences of
war, sooner or later conditions arise in which peaceful and peace-loving
nations prefer armed defense to subjection and slavery.

There is ample room on this earth for the two
billion human beings who inhabit it. There are ample known resources of
materials and skill to enable all nations to enjoy a high level of economic
prosperity and to face a future of continued plenty. There are ample proven
resources of mind and soul to enable the whole of mankind to enjoy the
blessings of spiritual advancement. But there has never been, and there is not
today, room on this earth for a political organization of mankind under which a
single nation or a group of nations will enslave and dominate all the others.

No single nation holds a monopoly of material
resources needed by all to maintain the modern level of civilized existence.
While some nations are more generously endowed than others, none is or can be
self sufficing within its frontiers except at the price of a disastrous decline
in the level of satisfaction of its people's wants. In the present stage of
civilization and technical progress, the material and spiritual resources of
the entire world are available to all nations through mutually beneficial trade
and through all those innumerable peaceful and friendly international
relationships in very phase of human activity whose capacity to enrich the
lives of individuals and of nations has already been convincingly demonstrated.
No nation can prosper without adequate access to the resources of the entire world
rather than only to those contained within its own frontiers. And such access
is possible only on the basis of peaceful international cooperation.

No nation is excluded from participation in
the benefits of these precious means of betterment and advancement of mankind,
except

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as it deliberately excludes itself either by short-sighted attempts at
national isolation or the even more short-sighted policy of armed
aggrandizement. Isolation dooms a people to inescapable impoverishment; armed
aggrandizement, under modern conditions of warfare, entails destruction for
which no conceivable advantages secured by the conqueror can possibly provide
compensation. A nation entering upon either of these ruinous courses inflicts
an incalculable injury upon its own people and upon the world as a whole.

The maintenance and improvement of the
structure of peaceful international relationships, upon which the entire fabric
of our present-day civilization rests, require a willing contribution from
every nation. They are impossible unless each nation respects the independence
and sovereignty of every other nation; unless each nation scrupulously observes
its international obligations and the rules of conduct embodied in the
voluntarily accepted provisions of international law; unless each nation is
prepared to abstain from resort to armed force as an instrument for the
settlement of international differences and controversies and to adjust all
such disputes solely by pacific means; unless each nation is willing to place
its economic relations with all other nations upon a basis of the greatest
practicable, mutually advantageous interchange of goods and services, flowing
through the channels of equal economic opportunity and nondiscriminatory
commercial treatment.

Every thoughtful man today, in every country
of the world, is confronted with the inescapable duty of weighing--in the scales
of reason, common sense, his own advantage, and the good of his nation--the
benefits of living in a world functioning on the basis of the principles I have
just enumerated against the prospect of living in a world caught in the
stifling net of anguish and suffering engendered by the constant recurrence of
war, of preparation for armed hostilities, and of the aftermath of armed conflict.

I, for one, cannot believe that any nation
today has irrevocably entered upon a road from which there is no turning save
in the direction of a new widespread war. The road to peaceful adjustment of
whatever reasonable and legitimate grievances there may exist has always been
open and is still open. But upon this road one must travel with a sincere
desire for peace, with a firm determination to observe the pledged word once
given, with a sense of respect for the dignity of the human soul. I hope with
all my heart that at the present fateful juncture of history, all nations will
decide to enter upon this road.

Yet so long as some nations continue to arm for conquest, all other

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nations are confronted with the tragic alternatives of surrender or armed
defense. So far as our nation is concerned, the mere posing of the alternatives
supplies the answer. We hope devoutly that a negotiated peace before rather
than after the senseless arbitrament of war, a peace based on a mutually-fair adjustment
of outstanding problems, will be the happy lot of mankind in the future which
lies immediately ahead. We are prepared to make our appropriate contribution to
such a peace. But if our hopes are doomed to disappointment, if, after all, the
red flames of war rather than the noonday sun of peace are to illumine our
horizon, we are equally prepared to defend successfully our national interests
and our cherished institutions.